'Basically cheating': Ex-Bok coach levels accusation at All Blacks

Former South Africa head coach Nick Mallett has hit back at claims the Springboks were walking around in the scrum by accusing the All Blacks of “basically cheating”.

All Blacks head coach Dave Rennie flagged this issue after his side were defeated in the second Test of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series on Saturday, saying the hosts were “able to walk around and go straight through our tighthead.”

Ironically, the All Blacks lost that match despite being far more competitive in the scrum than they had been in their victory a week earlier in Johannesburg, where the world champions were dominant for the opening hour.

South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus took umbrage to those comments by his counterpart, saying: “The first six scrums New Zealand had, every single one collapsed. It was reset, reset, reset, reset. Why is it only on their ball that the scrum collapses every single time? Don’t come with that nonsense and say that we’re walking around and try and put those things out in the media.”

“We’re not f***ing walking around. We’re scrumming through.”

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5 Sep 26

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Mallett has echoed Erasmus’ point on the Talking Boks podcast this week, saying the scrum has descended into “a joke” as the All Blacks persistently collapse in the hope of a reset or even a penalty going their way.

“What they do now is they don’t want to stay up because if they collapse, they force the referee to make a decision between one or the other side,” Mallett said. “So you have a 50 per cent chance of getting it right, of actually getting a penalty.

“Whereas the referees should be good enough to see who is actually pancaking, who’s going down.

“So this Saturday, we’re going to come as hard as we can in the scrums and hopefully we’re going to get better reward for our dominance in that area of the game.”

“If Rassie is correct in saying the first six scrums went down and there was only a penalty in the 35th minute when Marx and Ox Nche came on, then that’s inexcusable.

“You’re turning it into, basically, a joke because the side that puts the ball in just collapses the scrum. How can you go forward if the scrum is lying on the ground? You can’t.

“So, in fact, they are basically cheating to stop themselves giving a penalty away.

“If the ref says play away at No.8, but you’ve put pressure on them, started to get them going back and they fall to the ground, it’s a penalty. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that last Saturday.”

Ultimately, Mallett was fairly emphatic in how inferior the All Blacks’ scrum, or indeed any other scrum, is to South Africa’s.

In fact, he claimed the only front-row that would potentially be able to nullify South Africa’s starting trio is their replacement front-row.

He said: “If we go in with [Malcolm] Marx and Ox Nché and, I don’t really care who they have at hooker or tighthead, they’re in for a really tough afternoon. But if they’re faced with [Gerhard] Steenekamp and Deon Fourie, very good rugby players, but don’t have that explosive power at scrum time that the other two have.

“And Wilco – let’s not underestimate how powerful that guy is and how technically correct he is. He’s absolutely dead straight, rather like [Frans] Malherbe. Malherbe was better around the field, made more tackles, cleaned more rucks, but Wilco has got the same scrummaging power as he had.

“So when we get Wilco, Ox and Marx in the front-row, I challenge any front row in the world to match those guys. They can’t. There’s no one who can match those guys. In fact, the best would be Thomas du Toit, Jan-Hendrik Wessels and Steenekamp. Those would be the guys who would handle our best row the best.

“The All Blacks haven’t got the personnel, I don’t care what they say. They haven’t got a tighthead, nor have France got a tighthead, nor have England. We dominated them as well.

“We smashed Ireland in the front-row. No one’s accused us of walking around in any of those games. We just got penalty after penalty because those are the laws.